I just stumbled across the blog of Representative Ryan Dvorak (D-South Bend). It’s pretty good too! Not just the bland platitudes one might expect from an elected official. Actual substance. He apparently has a strong interest in the state’s technological infrastructure, and he’s getting married in November. Congratulations Representative!

Jim Bognar was kind enough to retrieve and forward Federal Register entries (PDF) concerning the 1985 proposal to move the southwestern counties of Vanderburgh, Gibson, Posey, Warrick, and Spencer from the Central Time Zone into the Eastern.

It’s interesting to note that not much has changed, not even the point person on time zone issues. Joanne Petrie had the job then, and she has the job now. I’ll bet she was really, really excited to hear that Indiana was opening that can of worms once again. Really, the State of Indiana should probably be responsible for picking up her salary.

The new wrinkle, obviously, is that the eastern part of Indiana will be observing Daylight Saving Time, and that could change the equation somewhat. But, some salient points from the Register entry:

The proposal was championed by chamber of commerce types and defeated when it caused an uproar among the citizens, who commented negatively at the rate of about 3 to 1 against moving from Central to Eastern.

It has some good history of time zones in Indiana. From 1918 to 1961, the State was on Central Time. From 1961 to 1967, the time zone line was roughly down the center of the state, but largely ignored. In 1967, Governor Branigin petitioned for Central throughout the state. In conducting their hearings the USDOT found strong support for central time in the northwestern and southwestern parts of Indiana but support for eastern time without Daylight Saving Time in most of the rest of the state which led to the system we had until the most recent effort at DST squeaked by on the strength of Representative “I’ll never vote for it” Woodruff’s last minute change of heart. The USDOT was cognizant of the fact that, despite the nominal differences in time zones, Indiana was functionally on the same time in the entire state for more than half of the year.

The Notice of Proposed Rule Making noted that the USDOT had the authority to grant more or less than the petition requested. In other words, it has the authority to move an area into a different time zone even if officials from that area or state officials didn’t ask for it. Presumably, USDOT wouldn’t be eager to use such authority, but interesting to note that it has the authority.

The arguments presented during the 1985 rulemaking look almost identical to the ones being made now. Indiana should be on one time. Indiana is geographically in the central time zone. Kids shouldn’t have to wait for school buses in the dark. People want their TV schedules to stay the same. Indiana executives are tired of being laughed made fun of by their east coast counterparts. (O.k., I’m reading between the lines on that one.) People near the time zone line are the most interested in the issue. Time zone lines should run through rural areas. My favorite line from the Register entry, because I can imagine the author grinning as he or she wrote it, was mention that “others argued that the southwestern portion of Indiana is midwestern in outlook and in its dealings, and that changing to eastern time would be inappropriate and personally repugnant.”

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial entitled Due process for drivers. Basically, they’re urging that the BMV not be allowed to administratively suspend a license. I sympathize with the sentiment. Having your license jerked for no reason then not being able to have it reinstated without waiting on hold for 3 hours before being redirected to a new number where nobody picks up and no voice mail.

Be that as it may, the editorial doesn’t account for my little neck of the license suspension woods. I do subrogation work for automobile insurers. Someone hits the insured, that person can’t or won’t pay for the insured’s damages, the company picks up the tab, and then sends me after the at fault driver. Under Indiana law, if you get a judgment against someone arising out of a motor vehicle accident and the person doesn’t pay the judgment within 90 days, you can ask the BMV to yank their license. Another interesting little twist — the license doesn’t get reinstated just because you file bankruptcy.

The Indy Star has a story entitled State slammed for hospital plan. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees came out with a report critical of Mitch Roob’s plans to privatize state mental hospitals.

Problems cited in a report prepared by the union include diminished care, no public access to information about what’s happening in the facilities, and the possibility of people who need to be in institutions instead ending up homeless or in prisons.

To keep costs in line, Fox said, the private managers, including not-for-profits would need to either cut salaries and benefits or “cherry pick” patients to avoid the sickest and most expensive.

Butch Collins, who has worked 15 years as a certified psychiatric attendant at Richmond State Hospital, expressed concern that the state’s plans will disrupt the care vulnerable Hoosiers have come to depend on.

“We’re their family,” he said of the patients.

Mitch Roob comes off as slightly ridiculous by trying to promote use of the term “localize” instead of “privatize” with respect to his plan to privatize the hospitals.

Maybe corruption at the federal level and with respect to the Iraqi debacle have made me cynical. Well, those things, and the implosions of big corporations like Enron even after it was able to defraud the state of California with engineered blackouts. But when I hear “privatization”, I don’t so much get relieved that the infallible business community will give us more for less. Rather I start thinking that transparency will diminish and well-connected rich people will get even richer off of taxpayer dollars while the services those tax dollars are meant to provide are gutted and the good jobs the State used to provide are replaced with McJobs with inadequate wages and no benefits. Eventually, you have a rotten husk where you used to have an infrastructure, and the corporation magically dissolves while its major shareholders skate off to Florida or Texas where they can buy gazillion dollar estates they get to keep as “homesteads” while they shake off the last few fleas of accountability through a quick bankruptcy.

So, maybe it’s not entirely unwise of Mr. Roob to try to change the terminology.

An AP story in the South Bend Tribune entitledGovernor has ambitious plan is sort of a rehash of this past Sunday’s Political Notebook entry in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Basically, Governor Daniels thinks an aggressive short session is necessary, but apparently doesn’t have any details on how he’ll direct his aggression.

I figure Hoosiers are short on a lot of things, but laws aren’t any of them. “Darnit, we just don’t have enough laws” is not something I think you’ll find most Hoosiers saying to one another.

An upside though. House Republicans say they plan 6 town hall meetings around the State to hear about Hoosier concerns. Betcha they hear a lot about time zones if they have the courage to venture into the western part of the state. Throw toll roads into the mix, and Gov. Daniels might end up as popular as Governor Taft in Ohio, last known to be polling at something like a 17% approval rating.

Long after submissions were scheduled to close, comments keep appearing on the USDOT Time Zone Docket. A large chunk of them appear to be coming from Benton County citizens who are concerned that Benton County may go to a different time zone than Tippecanoe County. Barely a peep from White County or Carroll County which also border, and depend a great deal, on Tippecanoe County. I suspect someone is organizing the anti-Central forces in Benton County and encouraging them to submit comments to the docket. In any event, I think it is fair to say that, per capita, Benton County has the highest submission rate in the state.

The Indy Star has a story on public access compliance somewhat misleadingly entitled Keeping secrets. The text of the article explains that the public access ombudsman reported that government agencies wrongly withheld records in more than half of the cases investigated. However, the article suggests that the number of violations probably are not up, the public’s awareness of their rights has increased. And the cases cited don’t seem to be any desire by the government to “keep secrets” but rather a concern over competing laws requiring confidentiality and general bureaucratic inertia over a task they are not set up to do and are not funded to do. Most governmental agencies have specific tasks they are designed to accomplish. The funding levels for these agencies are geared toward accomplishing the tasks — usually inadequately these days. Retrieval and copying of records for random requests are not something generally taken into account in the design and funding for the agency. Not to say the public doesn’t have the rights under the public access laws, but rather the Indy Star’s suggestion that the agencies are “keeping secrets” seems unfounded.